Brownie: Bush not doing heckuva job on fires

President Bush isn’t doing a heck of a job balancing National Guard call-ups to Iraq with states’ needs back home – and that’s crimping the government response to the California wildfires, according to the man who took the blame for the botched federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

Michael D. Brown, former chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told WJLA-TV reporter Rebecca Cooper in an exclusive interview Wednesday that the administration has not recognized how much of a “problem” it has with disaster response since so many National Guard troops are in war zones.

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He did not directly criticize the White House response to the fires.

“The White House needs to recognize that we are overstretched and that there is a problem,” Brown said in a telephone interview. “They need to increase the size of the regular Army and stop relying so much on the National Guard.”

Brown was the recipient of Bush’s infamous compliment in Mobile, Ala., at the height of the Hurricane Katrina chaos on Sept. 2, 2005: “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 — (applause) — they're working 24 hours a day.”

Brown is now on the board of directors of Atlanta-based Charys Holding Company, which provides consultation on emergency planning, response and reconstruction.

Cooper’s report on Brown’s comments will run Wednesday night on WJLA Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in Washington. WJLA is a division of Allbritton Communications Company, which publishes Politico.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) complained on Capitol Hill Tuesday that the ability of the state's National Guard to respond to disasters like the fires has been compromised because too much of its equipment and personnel are committed in Iraq, The Associated Press reported.

'Plenty of Guards'

Brown’s successor as FEMA chief, R. David Paulison, defended the National Guard’s strength when asked about it Wednesday morning during a series of television interviews from Los Angeles.

“I have not seen an issue with the Guard,” he said on CBS News’ “The Early Show.” “In fact, they're moving a lot of National Guards in here on the ground.”

Paulison added on CNN’s “American Morning” that “plenty of Guardspeople” were available. “There’s emergency management assistance compact between states where we can move more guardsmen in,” he said. “The fact is that there are plenty of people on the ground.”

Brown, who later was named first Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response, made the comments in response to an e-mail asking how much of a burden a catastrophe is for FEMA when a large number of a state’s National Guards are elsewhere during an emergency, and whether FEMA has the capability and infrastructure to be the substitute for so many Guards deployed overseas.

"It doesn't affect FEMA as much as it affects the states,” Brown said.

“FEMA's job is to pick up the phone and call another governor and say, ‘Hey, California is short on National Guard. Can you spare a few?’

“But you can call any governor in the country and everybody is stretched. Another problem is that literally some of these guys are home from National Guard duty in Iraq for literally five hours before they have to turn around and respond to something here, and that's not good.”

Bush, who has led an aggressive administration response to the fires in an effort to show he has learned the lessons of Katrina, plans to fly to Southern California on Thursday to survey the fire damage and response.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Bush will leave the White House early Thursday morning, participate in an aerial tour of the damage via helicopter, then receive a briefing by local, state and administration officials on the wildfires.

The president held a video teleconference on the fires and talked with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) earlier Thursday.

Schwarzenegger thanked Bush on live national television Thursday afternoon.